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The team behind the practice.

Donna draws on a tight bench of long-trusted specialists — educators who have spent careers inside the classrooms, counseling offices, and program reviews that this practice now serves.

Specialists

Two practitioners, two front lines.

Emily Lemp, MA, MS

Visual Arts Educator, NYC Department of Education — Gramercy Arts High School

Emily teaches inside one of New York City's specialized arts high schools, where curriculum has to do double duty: meet state standards while preserving the studio time that makes an arts program worth attending. Her work sits at the seam between pedagogy and program design — the daily, classroom-level decisions that determine whether a written curriculum actually lives.

For Innovative Education, she advises on curriculum mapping, scope-and-sequence builds, and the small editorial choices that separate a binder from a document teachers will actually use. Her dual master's training (MA and MS) keeps her fluent in both content and method.

The curriculum you can hand a new teacher on a Tuesday is the curriculum that survives the year.
Curriculum MappingProgram DesignArts IntegrationNYC DOEStandards Alignment

SueAnn Lundquist, MS

Director of Support Programs (CSTEP & TRIO), Farmingdale State College

SueAnn runs the federal and state-funded access programs — CSTEP and TRIO — that move first-generation, low-income, and historically underrepresented students into and through college. That work is the day-to-day version of what most schools describe in their mission statements: equitable pathways, measured in enrollments, retention rates, and degrees earned.

She brings a school-counseling foundation (M.S., Counselor Education / School Counseling, Long Island University) and more than a decade of higher-education practice — research, strategic planning, team building, and the public-facing work of recruiting families into programs they didn't know existed. For Innovative Education, she advises on college access, transition supports, and the counseling infrastructure that turns a workbook into a plan.

Access programs aren't extra — they're the part of the institution that proves the mission is real.
College AccessSchool CounselingCSTEP / TRIOStrategic PlanningHigher Education
Working together

A small bench, assembled by engagement.

Engagements are scoped and led by Donna. Emily and SueAnn join when a project calls for their specific expertise — curriculum architecture, or college-and-career programming — so districts get the right specialist at the right table rather than a generalist on everything.

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